Out of the past 100 or so new pubkeys sent (which covers about six days) maybe 10 people paid so far.

To be perfectly clear, it's not a matter of my opinion, or probability, or discussion that signing up for a financial service - even in a play currency like BTC, Monopoly Money or WoW gold - without having as much as cursorily and unattentively read the motherfucking FAQ is sufficient and indefeasible proof of idiocy. It is a matter of fact.

If you are one of the people who wrote these emails to me, you are an idiot. There is no discussion possible, you are an idiot. If you are one of the others, who cnat even wtire, but make up the chunk of ~90 or so people who discovered to their surprise and displeasure that they have to pay in order to acquire a seat at the exchange from the account confirmation email, you are just as much an idiot. Perhaps not an equally vocal one, but your head doesn't work enough to power a goat.

I do not believe idiots have any place in this world. You people shouldn't be alive. Until you grow some balls to resolve this problem yourself, please crawl into a hole somewhere and stay there. I do not wish to ever see you, talk to you or in any way interact with you. Nobody else does. You're humanity's dead weight, you're the cause everything costs more, takes longer and is less cool.

Just die already.

Because these idiots won't fucking die already, everyone else has to be inconvenienced. I deeply regret this. If it were practical I'd just kill them all with my own hand. Unfortunately, it is not practical, and so with my deepest and most sincere apologies to sane people everywhere I have to modify the MPEx FAQ. From now on, if the phrase "I understand that I will be required to pay 30 BTC as fees for registering this account, and I agree and promise to do so." does not appear in the email containing your key, it will be (silently) discarded.

I'm new to Bitcoin and found MPEx, saw the DICE stock.. I was planning to invest $50k-$100k

I have to say this article really killed my spirit to buy shares on MPEx.
So you are posting a screenshot of "an idiot's" email and then go on and rant for 3 paragraph sabout how big of an idiot he is but can't spare 2 words to explain why you aren't reducing this fee? You sound like a little child, that's not how a man solves a conflict, sorry.

Isn't the fact, that 500 people signed up and only 50 paid, a *HINT* that the fee is unattractive?

I myself, certainly can understand that people won't pay BTC30 (around $1,000-$3,000 in the last days) for a simple account creation that usually is free with similar services.
This fee is a burden for people to sign up, in turn to buy shares, in turn the whole market is suffering. Now who is the idiot? Is this so hard to grasp?
Personally I would pay the BTC30, because it would only be 3-6% of my intended investment.
But I wouldn't buy stock on MPEx as long as the BTC30 fee is there, just for the fact that I know nobody will sign up to drive the share prices higher.

there's a long tradition established already of normative behaviour (ie, discussing idiots' idiocy) - a fine example would be the ever illuminating MPEx FAQ, question #3.

the reasoning behind the MPEx registration fee has been amply explained and is well understood by those who keep themselves informed. As an example, take this recent discussion in #bitcoin-assets (a channel you really should be part of if you have any sort of intention of being part of Bitcoin finance) :

Apr 15 14:43:04 {mircea_popescu} i havce no idea why people represent this in terms of them buying something.
Apr 15 14:43:11 {mircea_popescu} it's an exam. yet another of life's exams most fail to pass.
Apr 15 14:43:17 {pgp} lol
Apr 15 14:43:58 {error4733} 350$ was a bargain i knew it hehe
Apr 15 14:44:01 {pgp} I think that model is correct.
Apr 15 14:44:07 {mircea_popescu} when you go to get your degree you are basically paying a fee for this priviledge, equal to the value of your time you put into making the papers
Apr 15 14:44:18 {mircea_popescu} (not the time spent learning, the time spent making the proofs that you'cve learned)
Apr 15 14:44:53 {pgp} non-trivial up front fee for exchange membership (which should be limited to non-idiots), but also low marginal costs for trading...
Apr 15 14:45:11 {mircea_popescu} yeh.
Apr 15 14:45:41 {pgp} idiots go to members to trade, where fees get marked up but no upfront fee - it's how it work irl
Apr 15 14:45:53 {mircea_popescu} and hopefulyl they get some sense/advice in the package.
Apr 15 14:46:05 {pgp} not that MPEX isn't real life...
Apr 15 14:46:06 {mircea_popescu} making it better for everyone involved.
Apr 15 14:46:56 {pgp} yep

Other than that, there is no conflict here. This is education, and this is how education works : children are shown what they did wrong, and why. If they fail to make amends there's always the switch as a last resort and public humiliation as an intermediate step.

There are no "similar services". For as long as you've not quite grasped that fundamental point it's safe to say you still have a lot to learn yet. Other fundamental misunderstandings apparent in your text support that evaluation. Hopefully you have the BTC to finance that learning. Good luck!

Without defending the people who didn't read the T&Cs, I think you may want to reevaluate your pricing.

I personally wanted to use your exchange and never signed up because of this requirement. I didn't because I think that the price was too high. You say "they have to pay in order to acquire a seat at the exchange", but that's not true. Acquiring a seat in an exchange would mean that end users have to trade via you and pay you commissions/fees per trade. In that case the seat has value as it effectively earns rent. This is not the case here. Paying the 30BTC doesn't mean that other people can then trade via me and I will be able to earn commissions from their trades.

So, from that point of view, 30BTC (>$2k currently) just so that you can sign up is way too high. In fact, given that signing up doesn't give the user any privilege but actually gives the opportunity for you, the house, to earn more money, I don't understand why did you decide to set your fee structure that way. There's a reason why casinos and brokers alike prefer to sign up as many customers as they can, even giving sign-up bonuses. It's because they expect to make money off the average customer. You have decided to take a different approach.

It's really your call and of course you are very clear in what you say, you can name your price/fee structure and it's up to the rest of us to decide whether we want to be your customers, no argument about that. I just question the rationale behind it, and I make a case that this decision actually leads to lower profits for you.

@jurov
if this is an attempt at sarcasm, it's pretty lame, and I'm being generous.

@mp
in the real world, a seat in an exchange means you don't get charged fees for trading but rather you can charge your clients who trade via you. Please show how this is the case with MPEx. Also, a seat in an exchange is an asset (thus it's transferable and can be traded on its own) as opposed to a fee, an expense.

What exactly am I showing you here ? The jurov guy is currently running a MPEx public broker based on his MPEx account, charging customers more per trade and less upfront (if anything at all, I don't recall). There's private brokers doing it too, for their own customers. All passthrough operators (and there's what, half a dozen or something) are parlaying their MPEx seats into assets on the 2nd tier exchanges.

You've basically landed on the shore of England and insist that there's no red busses, Big Ben or Westminster Abbey, and then ask to be shown them! What's wrong with buying a guide, or whatever ?

Well, my humor tends to be lame.... still, CoinBr is "exclusive" in a sense of being only online MPEx broker afaik. It does run over standard MPEx account, there were some minor accomodations and error fixes from MPEx as a result but they are equally provided to everyone.

From here it looks like the speculative frenzy RE bitcoins will be the incentive necessary to encourage hackers to attack and break down Unix- based systems and render all of open source vulnerable. Seems extreme but BTC = $600-1,200+ anything becomes possible.

How many Mircea Popescus are there? Inquiring minds would like to know!